As of the moment I'm not a current Entrecard member and until I've banged out 5 quality articles I won't be considered by the new manual review system. I enjoyed my time as an Entrecarder and while gathering info for my taxes I noted that I earned about $1000 from selling Entrecard Credits in the first half of 2008. The rules changed and I found myself engaged in other income activities that caused my Entrecard activity to drop and my interest to wan. So I wasn't too broken up when my 20 or so accounts got booted from the service a few months ago.

I faced a decision about Entrecard recently when Godaddy sent me a renewal notification for my Entrecarder.com domain. True, I wasn't using it actively, but I had put lots of effort into branding that term as mine. I opted to renew it for another 12 months and see if I couldn't have some fun with Entrecard again, assuming they would have me back.

So, as I logged in to start writing this post I noticed a comment from a disgruntled visitor asking me to take down my Entrecard widget so as not to waste his time whilst performing his dropping ritual. I'm not quite sure how he found my site, but am guessing it is on a big list someplace as there was a time when I was amongst the highest ranked Entrecard sites.

Hence the idea of echos. Just how long would my brief stint as he Entrecarder have a presence in our cyberworld? 5 years? 25 years? Could it be that 50 years from now some odd search combination would yield a reference to me, THE Entrecarder?

Odd. I chose to write about a virtual community, never intending to have an impact beyond the moment and yet the echos continue to bounce around month and month, year after year. But unlike the degradation of sound in real world echos, my words might appear as if I had just written them, ignoring the changes in life that accompany the passage of time. Some might find that type of immortality to be pleasing, an achievement only dreamed of by writers at any other era of man's existence. However, that thrill should be tempered by the realization that there might come a time when our own words condemn us, and try as we might, it's not within our power to call them all back.

So, it makes sense to me to keep on writing, in the hopes that I either create an improved record or render an evaluation of my words meaningless due to the sheer volume of the entries.